Indian Political System: Problems afflicting the civic body quality of the country
In a democratic country like India, Politics is the lifeline of the country and every aspect of the country is affected by the health of the political system.
Sadly the Indian Political System that was intended to solve the problems of the country has in itself become the biggest problem for the country.
Here are a few critical problems that are afflicting the civic body quality of India:
- People are divided: The first larger problem that we’re facing in this country is encouraging people to “group the population into splinters“, i.e to divide people into different groups based across caste and religious lines. Due to this, during elections parties and candidates are not encouraged to appeal to people on the broader based appeal. They just appeal to certain group of people to win the elections.
Let us see an example of how divisions are done in our democracy to win elections. Supposedly consider, in your area there are 100 people i.e there are 100 votes (100 electors) and the average turnout during elections is 50%. So if you want to win this particular election you need to convince this 50% of them who vote. If you manage 25-30 people to vote for you, you can win! And how does this translate to the national picture?
In the 15th Lok Sabha, the BJP and Congress got only 28% and 18% of the total national votes respectively.
From this you can understand “how representative was the party?” and “how representative was the governance?”
Here is a classic case where the minority of electors voting the majority of our legislatures.
- Dynasty in Politics: Then we come into the second problem of dynasty politics. During the 15th LokSabha elections, there was not even a single parliamentarian who was below the age of 30, who came from a non-political family, not even one honorable exception! And of the contestants who contested in the elections between the age of 25 – 30 years hail from political families.
How can we have David Cameroon in India or how can we have a Barack Obama in India, who without any strong political background rose to occupy the highest offices in their country, based on the sheer merit of their talent and based on their sheer competency and capability.
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Now parties have sorted to choosing candidates based on particular caste, because he can control a piece or a section of votes or he is born in a political family. This has resulted in the deterioration in the quality of our public system. And due to this political parties or political leaders are not able to successfully deliver public goods and public services.
Because political parties are failing to deliver public services efficiently, the private services are using this as an opportunity to mint money.
- Corruption in Politics: Then the third problem is the humongous amount of money that is spent during the elections. Nothing less than 4 to 5 crores in the assembly election and nothing short of 10-15 crores for the parliamentary election. Hence the corruption during these elections is leading the entire political system into a Return On Investment model.
So the one who wants to get into politics thinks that the best method of getting the best returns on his investment is to invest in politics.
And the moment he steps into his office, the first step he takes is to heap the benefits of the office and then this whole rent seeking, corruption and next is between the businessman, the contractor, the politicians and bureaucrats.
So what have we done with our system?
The current system is not representative enough, this system is not putting power in the people who have the competence, the attitude and integrity to lead this country forward. More importantly it is discouraging young people, discouraging talented new people who want to get into the party, get into the system and the system is corroding that is the background of any strong country, the political parties are crumbling themselves.
Innovative solutions India plan to implement from the words of Tejasvi Surya.